Dave and Amy Get Married!

Gathering Words

Hello and welcome!

We are gathered together here in the presence of family and friends to celebrate the love which Amy and David have for each other, and to give public recognition to their decision to commit their lives to each other. Marriage is the ultimate commitment to love, share, trust and grow with another person. It is the beginning of a whole new life.

Amy and David, in committing yourselves to each other today, you are performing an act of faith in each other - a faith which should grow and mature and endure. If you would have your love set in such faith, not just for this moment, but in all the days ahead, then ever cherish the hopes and dreams you now hold. Resolve that love not be blotted out by the commonplace nor blurred by the mundane in life. Faults will appear and life will bring challenges – but devotion, joy, and love can grow as you build them together. Stand fast in hope and confidence, believing in yourselves and in each other. In this spirit you can create a partnership which will strengthen both of you and give new hope, strength and joy to all who love you.

(TO GUESTS)

You are all especially welcome here because you form a circle of love and support. Amy and David are who they are, in part, because they have known all of you. You are not spectators today. You are all a part of their past. By your presence here, you promise to care for and uphold them, as they move into the future. As important as those who are here are those who are not, including Amy’s mom, Connie, who would have been so happy to celebrate with us. Her presence, and the presence of others, is with us today.

Opening Reading

From The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand, read by Amy's brother, Greg

It is with a person’s sense of life that one falls in love. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in one's widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his or her soul—the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one’s own sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one’s own basic values in the person of another. It is not a matter of professed convictions; it is a matter of a much more profound, conscious and subconscious harmony.

Consent

David, do you come to this union of your free will, and with the intention of being faithful in marriage to Amy as long as you live?

Amy, do you come to this union of your free will, and with the intention of being faithful in marriage to David as long as you live?

Salt Covenant

In history, agreements and promises were often sealed by a salt covenant. Each person would take a pinch of salt from their pouch and place it in the pouch of the other. Because the individual grains of salt could never be separated, this was an act symbolizing eternal loyalty.

Amy and David like to cook, too. As anyone who cooks knows, salt serves many roles in the kitchen. It brings life to food that is bland and boring. It is a preservative. It has antiseptic properties. These are all things that we wish for Amy and David’s marriage: that it endures, that it comforts and even heals, but most importantly that it brings enjoyment and satisfaction to them both each day of the rest of their lives.

Amy and David please come forward and combine your salt as a symbol of eternal loyalty to each other.

Second Reading

To Love is Not to Possess by James Kavanaugh, read by David's sister, Carrie

To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one's self in another,
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedo,
That lonely isolation does not permit,
It is finally to be abl,
To be who we really ar,
No longer clinging in childish dependenc,
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one's sel,
And perfectly joined in permanent commitmen,
To another--and to one's inner self,
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tid,
In the moon's own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child's scar,
Or an adult's deepest wounds,
They are openly free to b,
Who they really are--and always secretly were,
In the very core of their bein,
Where true and lasting love can alone abide,

Vows/Promises

Marriage is a bond to be entered into only after considerable thought and reflection. The exchanging of vows is a commitment to live a life together and to share the uncertainties of the future, knowing that your love for one another remains constant through it all. With full understanding of this, you, Amy and David, have come here today to be joined as one in marriage. I now ask you to exchange your vows.

(Amy says)
I, Amy, choose you, David, to be my husband.
To support you, respect you, defend you, and love you unconditionally, forever.
I promise to always be open and honest with you, even when it’s difficult.
I promise to work for our mutual benefit and not just my own. I promise to never ask you to be anything other than yourself. I promise to be a true and loyal friend and partner

(David says)
I, David, choose you, Amy, to be my wife.
To support you, respect you, defend you, and love you unconditionally, forever.
I promise to always be open and honest with you, even when it’s difficult.
I promise to work for our mutual benefit and not just my own. I promise to never ask you to be anything other than yourself. I promise to be a true and loyal friend and partner

Support from Family and Friends

Guests, please respond “We will.”

• Will you who are present here today, surround this couple in love, offering them the joys of your friendship?
• At times of conflict will you offer them the strength of your wisest counsel and the comfort of your thoughtful concern?

Rings

This is usually the point in the ceremony when someone talks about the wedding bands being a perfect circle, having no beginning and no end. But these rings do have a beginning. Rock is dug up from the earth. Metal is liquefied in a furnace at a thousand degrees. Hot metal is poured into a mold, cooled, and then painstakingly polished. Something beautiful is made from raw elements.

Love is like that. It's hot, dirty work. It comes from humble beginnings, made by imperfect beings. It's the process of making something beautiful where there was once nothing at all. Let these rings serve as a reminder of your own beginning, and how far you both have come, and how your love will only continue to get more beautiful as the two of you work and grow and love together.

David, please place the ring on Amy’s finger.

(David says) With this ring, I join my life to yours in marriage.

Amy, please place the ring on David’s finger.

(Amy says) With this ring, I join my life to yours in marriage.

May these wedding rings be a reminder to Amy and David of the commitment they have made today and be a testimony of their devotion in marriage.

Concluding Words

Marriage Pronouncement

Amy and David, having witnessed your vows for marriage with all who are assembled here, and by the authority vested in me, I announce with great joy that you are husband and wife.

You may seal your vows with a kiss.

Presentation of Couple

And now, to all of you who have come to celebrate this union, I take great pleasure in presenting, for the first time as husband and wife, David & Amy Copeland.